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To summarize during the 1990s it became more profitable and fashionable to make money by manipulating money than making and selling things. Most of us have not had enough extra money, even with our IRA’s because 200k is trivial in this league, to be as well paid as the hedge funds and Citibank.

A good example of this was the Dot Com boom (and bust) of the early to mid 90's. Many people created internet businesses that essentially did nothing, but yet a good number of these 'business' owners made tons of money until the FTC (?) stepped in and told them that they couldn't run a business unless they actually offered some type of service. Almost literally overnight the majority of these dot coms shut down (the legitimate ones carried on, though).

I should've read through the remaining posts before I posted my comment. Didn't mean to steal your dot com comment

No problem..it is a valid point worth making. My father-in-law started investing in dot coms toward the end of the bubble . I warned him there was nothing concrete about them yet his brokers insisted they were the hot new investment. He eventually lost about $100,000 on them. Not a lot for him but had he been in on the beginning it would have been a lot more I'm afraid. I told him to jump on eBay' IPO and he poo pooed me. I like to rub that one in every now and then!

And so goes the way of all mankind, thoughout history. Mises would call the abyss we are looking into a "crack-up boom" (google). No way to avoid it, just a matter of when.

Right about now is a good time to exit the financial games before getting a closer haircut. Those who ignore the warning shots and continue "living large" as per the last few years, will suffer most. As Ranger and Maineah have posted, "country folks can survive" (from Hank Williams Jr) and the real wealth will be in "land, farming, hunting, and food preservation".

Words to live by (literally).

Well, this is the other underlying motivation for my original comment. A couple of months ago I heard some snippets of people discussing how the economy was affecting them. The overwhelming majority of comments went something along the lines of We are being forced to give up (luxury X) this year. Now, luxury X were things like sending Billy off to his yearly summer camp in Greece, or not being able to afford insurance on that fourth automobile or having to give up their lawn-care service. Now, what is truly laughable about all of that is that these people represent the majority of those who will suffer the most. These are the type of people who are not going to be able to cope with true economic dire straits if they cannot make their weekly shopping trip to the Gap.

Well, this is the other underlying motivation for my original comment. A couple of months ago I heard some snippets of people discussing how the economy was affecting them. The overwhelming majority of comments went something along the lines of We are being forced to give up (luxury X) this year. Now, luxury X were things like sending Billy off to his yearly summer camp in Greece, or not being able to afford insurance on that fourth automobile or having to give up their lawn-care service. Now, what is truly laughable about all of that is that these people represent the majority of those who will suffer the most. These are the type of people who are not going to be able to cope with true economic dire straits if they cannot make their weekly shopping trip to the Gap.

Nail on the head there K-Luv. These people will have a lot farther to fall when the bottom drops out. A good investment these days might be a psychiatric clinic or a pharmaceutical company that specializes in anti-depressants.
These were the same clowns complaining the government should bail them out of their sub prime mortgages as now they could not afford the dues to the country club or the fitness center. Boo Hoo!

The price of oil is just a symptom, it isn't the whole disease. The disease is buried in our banking system.

I think your analysis is also slightly over-simplified because it doesn't appear to take into consideration the increasing demand for oil from China and India which will serve to increase the price of oil if oil production doesn't increase accordingly. Price increases would happen even in the absence of the inflation of the U.S. money supply. Or am I missing something?

at one time the U.S was out in front of every one in the mfg industry.
now its china and what every one thought were third world countrys.
every one complains about comunisum ,but the U.S seeme to do a whole lot of buisnes with china a comunist country.wana fix our economy bring mfg jobs back to the U.S

Do you factor in how much you save yourself growing/raising your own food.

No I was only thinking about our 1040 schedule 'F'.

My Dw is an accountant who really got 'into' Home Ec. So our food budget has always ran very low.

Even when we had 5 children living in our home, she managed to feed us for very low. Even now about half of our food goes to a food pantry.

I was recently caught by surprise to see how much our insurance policy is to be covered to market farm produce.

One year's Insurance is costing me more than buying and building a greenhouse. One year's Insurance is costing me more than all expenses incurred in starting an apple orchard.

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